


All Memories in Hell Are Bittersweet

by Nadia_Hernandez



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Drama, Drama & Romance, F/M, Hell, Love, Romance, Sad, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:29:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26204965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadia_Hernandez/pseuds/Nadia_Hernandez
Summary: Lucifer may be in Hell but at least he has his memories. Unfortunately, in Hell all memories are bittersweet.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	All Memories in Hell Are Bittersweet

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this, like, right before watching the new season. It's such a good show and I've loved season five so much so far.

John Milton, who had been an excellent poet and one of the first outside of the Yazidi or Marcionites to give Lucifer any credit as a three dimensional being with motivations beyond “doing it for teh evulz,” had written in his classic Paradise Lost that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. He had, in fact, put those very words into Lucifer Morningstar’s mouth as he spat in the very teeth of God. It was an awesome line that inspired metal bands and Star Trek movies alike. It was also, unfortunately, not true.

Well, maybe for some people it was. Demons like Mazikeen, born and bred to the Pit, thrived as they schemed, tormented each other and squabbled among themselves like spoiled children competing for favors from mother. As for Lucifer himself, though? Meh.

Maybe not what Hell was supposed to inspire, perhaps, but it’s what he felt with the day in, day out drudgery of administering the place. Or maybe that was the point. CS Lewis, another excellent poet and Lucifer thought just corking chap, had described Hell as a great grey city. It wasn’t far from the truth. There were highlights and some dark deco contrast but, on the whole, grey pretty much summed the place up in a nutshell.

He didn’t even really do much torturing of damned souls. They managed that pretty well on their own, thank you kindly. A man who murdered his nag of a wife might find, after being free of her for thirty years, that he was consigned to listen to her shrill voice for a subjective eternity. That was utterly delicious, honestly, and what’s more he would do so in the certainty that she rested behind Heaven’s pearly gates. Did she? Who knew… maybe the Mormons, but, well… the murdering husband himself was set in the stone knowledge that she enjoyed an eternity that he could not.

Even the unrepentantly evil could do a fantastic job of rendering themselves accursed. A life spent in the pursuit of hollow pleasures at the expense of others could render an eternity spent among those pleasures exquisite agony. Just ask any number of deceased kings or billionaires who languished among their ill-gotten gains. And as for those who had harmed the innocent or betrayed a friend… well, Lucifer didn’t do much torturing of the damned but sometimes the level of customer service he liked to provide asked for a personal touch.

That just helped the centuries fly by.

Today is not one of those days, though, so Luficer lounges miserably across his throne in the dark city. “You know, Herbert, sometimes I really don’t know why I took this job.”

Herbert is a non-Euclidean horror whose appearance would drive a mortal into shrieking insanity. He does not respond so Lucifer keeps talking. “Well, I say took this job… I didn’t really take it, did I? My father forced me into it, ages ago, for a miniscule act of rebellion. What sort of father does that? Curses his son for all bloody time just because he acts out a little bit? I just wanted to start a rock band! I wanted to make the music I wanted to make instead of leading the heavenly choir. Not even forever, just for a little while. So I was a trifle rebellious and started a war in the celestial spheres… isn’t that what teenagers do?”

Herbert cannot hear music, or perhaps it would be better to say he can only hear music too sublime for human ears. Lucifer goes on. He often does. “So I get out of this literal hellholle finally--and let me tell you it’s no picnic for the king of this place, truly, I’m being as punished as much as any of these poor dead sods--and finally start making a life for myself. I’ve got friends. I’m happy. I’ve got a nephew of all things. I’ve got…” He pauses here, breath caught in his throat. Since Herbert does not breathe he does not notice it. “I’m happy. So yeah… I’ve finally got it together, so what happens? Boom. Bloody stupid demons drag me back for literally forever.” He sighs. “What kind of life is this, Herbert?”

If Herbert had shoulders he would shrug. He doesn’t, though. Lucifer dismisses him and the aberrant being folds reality around himself and heads off to do whatever it is eldritch abominations do with their time. Lucifer knows what he will being doing with his--moping and there’s not a damn thing Father or anyone else can bloody do about it.

It’s not fair to say moping, though, not really. All memory in Hell is bittersweet. What meaning would any torment have, someone almost wise once told him, if the dead here could not dream of Heaven? It was enough to draw him up short, to make him think, and he did precious little thinking in those days. It’s all he does now, dwelling on a past that was almost and a future that will never be.

John Paul Sarte, the sour little French bastard, said that Hell was other people. That wasn’t true, though, no place near it. Hell was often Jean Paul Sarte--he’d met him enough to believe that was the case--and hell could be in people as often as they were in hell but, to Lucifer, the people he cared about were all he knew of heaven. True heaven, the way humans of a mystical bent understood it, not just the celestial silver city of his creation.

“Amenadiel, you beautiful bastard, you fell and are more an angel than I ever was with wings or without. I hope you’re well, and Linda, and little Charlie.” He raises an imaginary glass, then remembers that he controls this dimension fully and rectifies that. “Cheers to you, too, Maze for bringing a little slice of Hell to Earth wherever you go and to Eve for realizing, finally, that you are not just someone’s delectable little rack of rib.” He chuckles. “You are delectable, though. Hell, cheers even to Detective Douche for proving that a man can be prove a friend, of sorts, even if there is nothing likable in him. I drink to you all!”

He doesn’t drink to two of them, though. He won’t think of the Spawn, how her sweet little face must have twisted into a frown when she learned that her favorite playmate was not coming home, and he will not think of up-tilted blue eyes rimmed with silvery pain, nor of soft lips salty with tears. Hell has a torture planned for everyone, even the man who runs the bloody place, and all memory there is bittersweet.


End file.
